New Year's baby tradition special for families, hospitals

Wednesday

On average, there are roughly 200 babies born each day in Massachusetts, keeping doctors and nurses constantly busy across the commonwealth.

Each delivery comes with its own set of routines, challenges, joys and sometimes sorrows, but New Year’s Day babies come with unique significance.

“New Year’s is fun because we get couples who come in and are very excited to be having a baby, but doubly excited by the prospect of having the first New Year’s baby,” said Peggy Kleimon, a registered nurse at Emerson Hospital in Concord.

Hospital workers across the state announce the first baby born in their respective facilities. Photos and sometimes interviews of the families are published in newspapers and featured on TV.

The announcements may seem routine in Massachusetts, but the tradition stems as far back as ancient Greece, “where an infant in a basket was paraded around to mark the annual rebirth of Dionysus, the god of wine and fertility,” according to the History Channel.

Betsy Ross, J. Edgar Hoover, Paul Revere and Pope Alexander VI were all born on Jan. 1, fueling the belief that “babies born on the first of the year grow up to enjoy the luckiest of lives, bringing joy and good fortune to those around them.”

The superstition encourages some families to try to time cesarean sections or inductions so their babies might be born first in the new year, making it a popular time of year for births. For others, it’s pure coincidence and sometimes not that joyous in the moment.

“It was super scary and awful. New Year’s was the last thing on my mind. We didn’t even think about it,” said Rachel Shanley of Acton.

Shanley’s due date was Jan. 3, but went to the hospital on New Year’s Day early with preeclampsia, a potentially deadly condition that affects mothers. Shanley was ultimately OK, successfully giving birth to her daughter, Annika Shanley Fuhrmeister.

Annika, who was the first baby born at Emerson Hospital in 2016, will turn 3 years old on New Year’s Day. The family is celebrating by going cross-country skiing in Vermont.

“It’s great in that everyone remembers her birthday,” Shanley quipped, when asked about the significance of Annika’s birthday now, three years later. “But at some point she’s going to realize that people double up on Christmas gifts with her birthday, which she’s definitely going to be less cool with.”

Shanley, now a mother of two, remembers everyone being so busy during the birth that it wasn’t until afterward the hospital realized Annika was the first New Year’s baby born at Emerson.

“She had a lot of bright red hair, so she was notable and everybody was pretty excited,” Shanley said.

The hospital gave the family a gift basket filled with goodies and memorabilia from the gift shop. Her family received a citation from Massachusetts House Speaker Robert DeLeo.

Gifts are common in hospitals across the state. Southcoast Health in New Bedford celebrates the first New Year’s baby born in the South Coast region each year, giving babies stuffed animals and gift cards.

The public affairs offices of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Boston Medical Center, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Massachusetts General Hospital, St. Elizabeth’s Medical Center and Tufts Medical Center stay in touch after midnight to determine which hospital had the first baby born. The first born is announced to media outlets across Greater Boston.

“It’s a fun time for all of us to come together as one team to celebrate happy news,” wrote Teresa M. Herbert, spokeswoman at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, in an email.

Kleimon, who works 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. shifts, has helped deliver babies for 33 years. She spent most of those years working on New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day, so she’s helped usher into the world several New Year’s babies along the way.

When asked whether any of those deliveries stuck out in her memory, Kleimon remembers one birth about two decades ago when a mother was scheduled for a cesarean section on New Year’s Day, but the delivery did not go as planned.

“She had twins, but they had different birthdays,” Kleimon said. The first twin was born at 11:55 p.m. on Dec. 31, and the second was born at 12:04 a.m. Jan. 1.

The timing is unique, but not entirely uncommon. A Worcester Telegram & Gazette newspaper clipping dated Jan. 2, 2000 shows the same thing happened to a Worcester woman who gave birth to a boy and a girl at St. Vincent Hospital.

“It’s a very exciting time for families,” Kleimon said.

Eli Sherman is an investigative and in-depth reporter at Wicked Local and GateHouse Media. Email him at esherman@wickedlocal.com, or follow him on Twitter @Eli_Sherman.